"Your Daily Tripod" reflects the personal Fourth Day journeys of its authors and editors. We are happy to have companions like you share in this project. Our prayer is that these reflections will invite and inspire your Fourth Day journey of Piety, Study and Action as much as writing or editing them inspires our journey and brings us all close moments with Jesus and our neighbors.

Monday, March 03, 2014

New Birth to a Living Hope

Monday
of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time

For a little while you may have to suffer through
various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold
that is perishable even though tested by fire, may prove to be for praise,
glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.1 Peter 1:6-7

Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him, “You
are lacking in one thing.Go, sell what
you have, and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come,
follow me.”At that statement, his face
fell, and he went away sad, for he had many possessions.Mark 10:21-22

Piety

We begin our Lenten
Journey in a few days with a mark on our foreheads.This mark will acknowledge what we have in
common with the man in today’s Good News.We have many possessions and want more from Safeway or Target, eBay or
Amazon, the iTunes store or WalMart.Our
imperfection cannot be eliminated by us alone.However, nothing is impossible for God.Jesus reminds us that we also share in the same new birth to a living
hope that is symbolized by the joy of Christmas and the suffering of Lent.Let us embrace the ashes we will receive
Wednesday.May they help us find room on
our journey to grow with God.Rather
than a sign of despair and sadness, let these ashes be the fuel that powers our
inspiration throughout the Lenten journey ahead.(Based upon CRS Rice Bowl Prayer).

Study

The number of “smartphone”
applications which help us to track what we have boggles the mind.

Stocks
is a daily update on the major stock exchanges and can be customized with
selected stocks or mutual funds

Zillow
allows us to track the value of our house and at a glance check out how our
house value compares with the neighbors.

Mint
and Quicken are two (of many) that consolidate
a report on all checking, saving credit card, and loans in one place.

Personal Capital
and FutureAdvisors check up on your
investments and make personal suggestions about how to change your investments
to lower fees, improve returns, modify risk and more. These try to link all
your accounts in one place to see your total net worth.

Future Money
helps not just to know what we have today but what we might have in the future.

Loan Calculator,
Mortgage Marketplace help you track your debt (and may tempt you to accumulate more loans)

Freedom$
helps people who want to accumulate enough money (defined as ten times your
current income minus debt) as a foundation to one day have control over their
work-life balance

Retirement Countdown
is an app which will tell you how many days you have until you hope to retire (Maybe
by then you will have the amount of assets suggested in Freedom$?)

Think of how sad the man
who talked to Jesus would be if he were living today.In the case of every person reading this, no
matter what your financial conditions, we all have multiples of property
compared to the average person in ancient Roman-occupied Palestine.

Action

All is not lost.What may be impossible for humanity and
Silicon Valley is not impossible for God and some enterprising software
developers assisting Catholic Relief Services.

With Mardi Gras
approaching tomorrow, there are two steps to take.First, enjoy a little King Cake on Tuesday
and check out the final parades at www.NOLA.com/paradecam.

Then, download the CRS Rice Bowl application.It will give you prayer ideas for every day
of Lent, help you to pledge a certain amount to charity and track your progress
toward that, gives your simple meatless recipes to use on Fridays in Lent, and
finally shares stories of hope from around the world.